I’ve had a few friends ask if I could put up the text from Noah’s service this last Friday. Katy and I wrote this together, along with input from Isaac and a few gracious friends who helped read it over and help us think it through.
Memorial for Noah – 20 Feb 12:00
Procession with Noah and pallbearers.
Greeting: We’re so grateful to everyone who has been able to come today and feel the solidarity of friends across much distance to remember Noah, give thanks for his life, to commit his body back to the earth and to comfort one another in our grief.
We are mystified and stupefied by what has happened, but one thing that we are grasping on to in a time when we are left with so many aching questions is that even in this place of deep grief we have been met and surrounded and held by love. And while we don’t have answers our hope and comfort is that this same love is holding our sweet Noah.
Many funeral liturgies are not well suited to what we are doing today. They are written to celebrate the full span of human life and offer reminders about divine purpose and presence.
In a time such as this, we wish to affirm that it is right to feel anger, emptiness, panic, sadness, and confusion. The purpose of being together today is not to “get past” those feelings, but to share them with each other. This isn’t a day for answering questions but asking them together. We want to set aside platitudes today and honour the importance of silence and speechlessness.
We don’t want to pretend that we always knew or can even capture exactly today what our playful and enigmatic Noah boy was thinking. But the words and songs that we do have to offer today are intended to capture things that we have noticed and learned from Noah over these years.
We’d like to open with a poem by Andrea Gibson, “Love Letter from the Afterlife” read by Noah’s Aunt Mari
Andrea Gibson, “Love Letter from the Afterlife”
My love, I was so wrong. Dying is the opposite of leaving. When I left my body, I did not go away. That portal of light was not a portal to elsewhere, but a portal to here. I am more here than I ever was before. I am more with you than I ever could have imagined. So close you look past me when wondering where I am. It’s Ok. I know that to be human is to be farsighted. But feel me now, walking the chambers of your heart, pressing my palms to the soft walls of your living. Why did no one tell us that to die is to be reincarnated in those we love while they are still alive? Ask me the altitude of heaven, and I will answer, “How tall are you?” In my back pocket is a love note with every word you wish you’d said. At night I sit ecstatic at the loom weaving forgiveness into our worldly regrets. All day I listen to the radio of your memories. Yes, I know every secret you thought too dark to tell me, and love you more for everything you feared might make me love you less. When you cry I guide your tears toward the garden of kisses I once planted on your cheek, so you know they are all perennials. Forgive me, for not being able to weep with you. One day you will understand. One day you will know why I read the poetry of your grief to those waiting to be born, and they are all the more excited. There is nothing I want for now that we are so close I open the curtain of your eyelids with my own smile every morning. I wish you could see the beauty your spirit is right now making of your pain, your deep seated fears playing musical chairs, laughing about how real they are not. My love, I want to sing it through the rafters of your bones, Dying is the opposite of leaving. I want to echo it through the corridor of your temples, I am more with you than I ever was before. Do you understand? It was me who beckoned the stranger who caught you in her arms when you forgot not to order for two at the coffee shop. It was me who was up all night gathering sunflowers into your chest the last day you feared you would never again wake up feeling lighthearted. I know it’s hard to believe, but I promise it’s the truth. I promise one day you will say it too– I can’t believe I ever thought I could lose you.
Silence for 1 minute
Scripture reading – Psalm 23 – Mark VanSkiver (Katy’s dad, Noah’s gramps)
We have a little introduction for the scripture reading from Marcia (Noah’s grammy): During those days when Noah was always carrying a stack of Bibles around… We had just gotten back to Birmingham from a trip to Ireland and Noah and I had plopped down in the living room and he pulled out three of his favorite Bibles. I asked him what his favorite Bible verse was and he said the 23rd Psalm and proceeded to read this from all three Bibles. I asked him what was his favorite and he said, “Mama’s Bible“. I asked why and he said, “Partially because it’s Mama’s Bible but also because I can understand it. He liked also his little King James Bible because it had a nice ribbon to go to Psalm 23 and it also had a nice box. But, he said, “it has words I don’t understand” The The Jesus Storybook Bible has pretty pictures but it doesn’t tell the full story…”
Here’s the text from The Jesus storybook Bible:
God is my Shepherd And I am his little lamb. Love feeds me. Love guides me. Love looks after me. I have everything I need. Inside, my heart is very quiet. As quiet as lying still in soft green grass In a meadow By a little stream.
Even when I walk through the dark, scary, lonely places I won’t be afraid Because my Shepherd knows where I am. Love is here with me Love keeps me safe Love rescues me Love makes me strong And brave.
Love is getting wonderful things ready for me Especially for me Everything I ever dreamed of! Love fills my heart so full of happiness I can’t hold it all inside. Wherever I go I know God’s Never Stopping Never Giving Up Unbreaking Always and Forever Love Will go, too!”
Faith’s reflection (read by Noah’s cousin and best friend Faith)
Jeremy, Katy and Isaac, what have we learned from Noah?
We (Isaac, Katy and Jeremy) wanted to share a bit with you all about Noah but there’s always too much to say and too little time. We thought it might be nice to share with you four things that we (and that “we” includes so many of us here today) have learned from Noah. It’s a good opportunity to celebrate the ways we are all striving in these areas and the ways that Noah challenged us to be our best selves. So here are four lessons Noah lived out everyday:
1. Noah was always and only his authentic self. This was a deliberate choice for him – one which we like to think we affirmed in different ways along the way as parents and brother – but it was his own decision and often against many social pressures. He continued to bring authenticity to every day, refusing to conceal his frailty, struggles or pretend to be someone else in order to make his life easier. Even as he grew older and some of his ways of finding comfort and holding presence became less socially acceptable, he continued to sink deep into sensory play, cultivate close connections with animals, birds and nature, pursued his focussed interests, fled from sensory distress and overwhelm, and engaged in alternative and creative ways of communicating. Noah was his own person, providing forms of truthful disclosure to the world through acts of authenticity. And he taught so many of the adults in his life to try and do the same through his example.
2. Noah wasn’t afraid to ask for help. He taught us that it is good to allow other people to meet our needs and to bring vulnerability in trust, whether that was about riding in a wheelchair without shame because walking was just hard sometimes, or asking us to bring him a snack, and seeking help with all the day-to-day needs we have, Noah reminded us that true strength isn’t found in independence, but in the ways that you place yourself in relational webs of interdependence and you can’t do that unless you are willing to share your frailty with others.
3. Noah showed how important it is to allow yourself to stay tender and feel all your feelings without shame. He would easily burst into tears when he felt overwhelmed, or sad, or touched by something beautiful. He kept his feelings close at hand and rarely held them in. You knew when his feelings had been hurt, or he felt scared or angry and equally when he felt joy and delight, silly or excited. By allowing himself to fully feel all his feelings and allow them to flow freely in and through him it enabled him to share and experience life more vibrantly
4. Bubba brought joy, exuberance, whimsy and irreverence. Though he had his serious teenage boy moments, at the heart of Noah’s days was a sense of pleasure, playfulness and love for the world around him. This carried forth in his constant sharing and crafting of jokes. He usually started his planning for April fools day in October. The pleasure of a puzzle, lego kit, solo board game, being silly, having a cuddle, digging a hole, catching snails, watching birds, memorizing digits of pi, sitting in the sand and watching the waves crash. Noah was content with simple pleasures. Not a day went by without him inviting us to do the same.
That is our sweet Noah boy, or at least a glimpse of him which we offer to you in hopes that we can remember Noah and in remembering Noah, find our own authenticity, vulnerability, tenderness, and joy.
Committal
We have entrusted Noah to Love’s mercy and we now commit his body to be cremated: earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
Noah belongs to God and to Him he returns.
We commend our son, brother and beloved friend Noah to the embrace of Love.
Benediction
How do we carry Noah’s memory as we go back into the world? How can we hold onto the sacred awareness of the paradoxical strength and fragility of life and beauty and love?
Let us go in peace. Look to and care for one another. May today be a day of release, where we forgive those things that need forgiving, share gentle words and hugs with friends to repair acts of unkindness or impatience. Let us open ourselves wide so that we can carry Noah’s vulnerability as we share life with one another. Let us share all of life that needs sharing. May the source of all Love help us to remember that there is beauty everywhere in all things and all people. May we find new ways to be honest with ourselves and vulnerable with each other and may Love give us everything that is good so that we may give and find comfort in each other.
Closing Prayer: Blessing for the Brokenhearted by Jan Richardson
There is no remedy for love but to love more.
—Henry David Thoreau
Let us agree
for now
that we will not say
the breaking
makes us stronger
or that it is better
to have this pain
than to have done
without this love.
Let us promise
we will not
tell ourselves
time will heal
the wound,
when every day
our waking
opens it anew.
Perhaps for now
it can be enough
to simply marvel
at the mystery
of how a heart
so broken
can go on beating,
as if it were made
for precisely this—
as if it knows
the only cure for love
is more of it,
as if it sees
the heart’s sole remedy
for breaking
is to love still,
as if it trusts
that its own
persistent pulse
is the rhythm
of a blessing
we cannot
begin to fathom
but will save us
nonetheless.
Closing words
We’d like to remind people of two things as you depart: (1) please come join us for the reception, details are on the back of your programme and (2) we have bubbles for everyone. Please take these with you as you go outside and send them into the world to celebrate the joy and whimsy that Noah brought to every day as a lover of bubbles, playfulness and simple joys.